Carrie Rodriguez, 3/19/09 Photo: Charlotte Shafer
With her large brown eyes, full lips, and alabaster skin, Carrie Rodriguez strikes a breathtaking image before she utters a single musical sound. She's wearing a short-short dress and ridiculously high heels, showing off her perfectly unblemished and long slender legs. She expertly manages somehow to squat down to fiddle with her equipment without falling or accidentally revealing more skin than she should. She lets an "F" word slip when having some trouble with a pedal, demonstrating that this sweetheart who developed her violin skills in Austin schools is no stranger to sin.
Then, when the performance begins, she takes your breath away again. Her songs represent stories that could be told from a trailer park. Her southern twang, hard but not harsh, meshes with a vocal quality that alternates between utterly other-world angelic and sandstone gritty. She attacks the fiddle like that devil you've heard about. Yet you will believe she is a true southern angel.
This describes Carrie Rodriguez's performance at Americana Music Association's SXSW Showcase at Antone's, March 19, 2009.
At one point, she told the story of how, during SXSW 2008, she stayed up all night drinking whiskey with Lucinda Williams until 6 in the morning, then had to get on a plane to meet up with Dan Wilson (from Semisonic) in Minneapolis and, although she felt a little "green", together they wrote the title track to her latest album "She Ain't Me".
Here is the video of her performance of that song during SXSW 2009.
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